“It’s that kind of absurdity that is becoming the Justice Department and the losers here are going to be the American people and the rule of law.”
Washington D.C. — Yesterday, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell to call out D. John Sauer, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and nominee for solicitor general and other Justice Department nominees for their allegiance to Trump over the presidency and the American people, and applaud the courageous attorneys who were unwilling to compromise their oath to the Constitution.
View the full interview here.
Key Excerpts:
On the Justice Department nominees choosing Trump over the American people:
[…] He could have said, “well, I made that argument before the Court of Appeals. It was rejected by the Supreme Court. They said, there’s nothing in the Constitution that requires that. So that’s not my position. That wouldn’t be my position.” But of course, it still is his position. Which gets to the fundamental flaw with these Donald Trump criminal defense lawyers becoming the top lawyers of the Justice Department. And that is, they never leave behind the representation of Donald Trump, the person, not the office of the presidency, not the American people. In fact, I asked him also during that hearing, will you recuse yourself from any case that you were involved in as his personal defense lawyer? And I got the same answer I got from Todd Blanche and Bondi, which was “I’ll consult the career ethics lawyers.” The problem with that, Lawrence, as you know and as I pointed out to him in the hearing, is they’re gone. Those career ethics lawyers are gone! They’ve been demoted, dismissed, transferred out. And the two people running that office now, one is another Trump criminal defense lawyer, and one is the former chief of staff for Emil Bove, someone who only graduated from law school a few years ago.
So, Lawrence, you can picture the scene in the Justice Department if this guy is confirmed, where he asks one of Trump’s other criminal defense lawyers, “should I recuse myself from this case?” And the other criminal defense lawyer for Trump says, “I don’t think so, but maybe I should recuse myself from advising you on it, because I was involved in the same case.” To which you could imagine Sauer replying, “No, you don’t need to recuse yourself.” I mean, it’s that kind of absurdity that is becoming the Justice Department and the losers here are going to be the American people and the rule of law.
On the patriots unwilling to sacrifice their oath:
That is, sadly the case. And I continue to be just astonished by the situation in New York. You have a mayor charged with serious corruption. You have the president intervening to dismiss the case. And why? Because, apparently, the mayor is willing to do his bidding on immigration if the case is dismissed. You have the prosecutor handling the case alleging that she was present when this quid pro quo was being discussed and you have now, I think, six prosecutors at SDNY and at justice who resigned rather than do this dirty deed.
And my question to this nominee is, would that have been you? Would you have stood your ground? Would you have done the principled thing like these six prosecutors, or would you be the coward or fool that this prosecutor was referring to, who was willing to sacrifice everything they’re supposed to believe in as a member of the Bar. And sadly, the answer is, “yeah, I’ll do the deed. I want the job that badly. I’ll do the deed.” And I tell you, because those prosecutors that we saw in New York out of justice, who resigned, and because of these other patriots in other offices who are resigning, there’s some real profiles in courage. The tragedy of our time is that those profiles in courage turn out to be so rare.
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